His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of technology in education, and the role of computers in the writing process.
Bolter collaborates with researchers in the Augmented Environments Lab, co-directed with Blair MacIntyre, to create apps for entertainment, cultural heritage and education for smart phones and tablets.
[1] Along with John B. Smith and Michael Joyce, Bolter co-created Storyspace, a software program for creating, editing, and displaying hypertext fiction.
[1] Although always credited as a coauthor of Storyspace with Joyce and Bolter, Smith wanted to clarify in an interview that he wasn’t involved in the development of either TALETELLER (which was a precursor to Storyspace) or Storyspace — but that he made more of an intellectual contribution insofar as "there was a sort of cloud of ideas that we were all drawing on in the discussions we’d have in this research entity at UNC, Textlab" [2] Some of the notable hypertext fictions created in Storyspace include: Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story, Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.
More importantly, Storyspace provides facilities for writing and editing, which includes a map of the structure of the links, making it accessible for new users.